Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft, the VSS Unity, must first successfully navigate a series of test flights before the craft can make its way into outer space. However, it is likely that suborbital commercial tourism and research flights will come before the company ventures outside of the atmosphere.

Image Credit: Hardo Müller / Flickr

Even then, due to the weight of the VSS Unity, flights will not go beyond the internationally recognized border of space, or Karaman line, which sits above 100 km (62 mi). Instead, flights will travel above the United States Air Force’s boundary of 80 km (50 mi).

‘Fixated on Mars’

During his chat on CNBC, Branson said, “Space needs a lot of companies doing different things to benefit the earth back here.” There is much humanity can learn from traveling and experimenting in space. But Branson believes his and Jeff Bezos’s efforts with Blue Origin are more likely to do that then Elon Musk with SpaceX.

“Elon is absolutely fixated on going to Mars and I think it’s his life mission,” Branson said. “Jeff and ourselves [at the Virgin Group] are more interested in how we can use space to benefit the earth.”Click to View Full Infographic

Of course, this is making a huge assumption that putting humans on Mars will not have benefits for Earth. In fact, traveling to other parts of the solar system will likely have a major impact on Earth in the form of space mining, as well as the potential to make some truly unfathomable discoveries impossible on our own planet.

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